Another idea to allocate Electoral Votes: Semi-Proportional-WTA

[defe07]

Here's another idea to allocate Electoral Votes. If a candidate gets 50%+1 of the votes in a state, that candidate gets all of a state's Electoral Votes. If no candidate reaches 50%+1, a state's Electoral Votes are allocated proportionally.

[Hashemite]

I don't like the eerie similarities to the apparentements law.

[Stranger in a strange land]

My preliminary calculations reveal Gore would have run in 2000 had this system been used, but it punishes states for having close results: a state with no majority is normally reduced to 0, 1, or 2 net EVs.

[muon2]

If the nation voted with the Louisiana system, this would be the equivalent of saying that any candidate pushed to a runoff would share the seat. For states looking to have more active campaigns, it would punish any states where a strong third party emerged. There would be little gain to campaign hard when 50% was not achievable.

[Californian Tony]

Here's another idea to allocate Electoral Votes. If a candidate gets 50%+1 of the votes in a state, that candidate gets all of a state's Electoral Votes. If no candidate reaches 50%+1, a state's Electoral Votes are allocated proportionally.

That would be quite dangerous : somebody who would gets 50.01% of the votes will get the double that somebody who gets 49.99...

[True Federalist]

Here's a different Semi-Proportional method.

Instead of the D'Hondt divisor of s+1 or the Sainte-Laguë divisor of s+½, use a divisor of s+S, where s is the number of seats the party has already gotten, and S is the number of seats in the district.  This effectively gives any party that gets twice the vote of the next larger party, WTA, and really cuts into chance of smaller parties to get a seat.

Applying this to 2000, one gets:
State   Gore   Bush
AL   3   6
AK   0   3
AZ   3   5
AR   3   3
CA   37   17
CO   3   5
CT   6   2
DE   2   1
DC   3   0
FL   12   13
GA   4   9
HI   3   1
ID   0   4
IL   15   7
IN   3   9
IA   4   3
KS   1   5
KY   2   6
LA   3   6
ME   2   2
MD   7   3
MA   11   1
MI   10   8
MN   5   5
MS   2   5
MO   5   6
MT   0   3
NE   0   5
NV   2   2
NH   2   2
NJ   11   4
NM   3   2
NY   29   4
NC   4   10
ND   0   3
OH   9   12
OK   1   7
OR   4   3
PA   13   10
RI   4   0
SC   2   6
SD   1   2
TN   5   6
TX   6   26
UT   0   5
VT   2   1
VA   5   8
WA   6   5
WV   2   3
WI   6   5
WY   0   3
   266   272

Effectively it gives a blend of proportional and WTA.  If you can get twice as many votes as the second place party, you get all the electors.

The disenfranchisement of small paries by this method can be seen by applying this method to the 2009 Israeli Knesset where it would produce a Knesset with 62 Kadima and 58 Likud members. with all the other parties shut out.  Increasing the constant raises the threshold to be guaranteed a seat. Notice that the effect of increasing the constant is to take seats away from the small parties and hand them primarily to the large parties

Divisor of s+2 to the Israeli election gives:

Kadima 30
Likud 30
YB 15
Labor 13
Shas 10
YTJ 5
National Union 3
United Arab List–Ta'al 3
Hadash 3
New Movement-Meretz 3
The Jewish Home 3
Balad 2

Divisor of s+4:

Kadima 34
Likud 33
YB 16
Labor 13
Shas 11
YTJ 4
National Union 2
United Arab List–Ta'al 2
Hadash 2
New Movement-Meretz 1
The Jewish Home 1
Balad 1

Divisor s+6:

Kadima 37
Likud 36
YB 17
Labor 13
Shas 11
YTJ 3
National Union 1
United Arab List–Ta'al 1
Hadash 1